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THE CNN EFFECT IN ACTION
comparison to the other pillars of the trinity. Third, the case study that
is employed in this book on the period of civil war before NATO’s
intervention in Kosovo lends itself best to an assessment of foreign
policy, as opposed to the other two areas, as there is significantly more
evidence to review. Over this period, there was no consistent moni-
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toring of Western public opinion on the Kosovo crisis. There was also
no Western military activity to screen before the actual intervention.
The People and the CNN Effect
The importance of public opinion in politics and especially foreign
policy is a subject of great debate. Much of the literature on the topic
is skeptical of public opinion’s independence; indeed, the classic real-
ist arguments against the power of world public opinion claim that
such power is both fictional and impotent. Hans J. Morgenthau, for
example, argued that there is no world public opinion, and that even
if there was, it would exercise no restraining force on the policies of
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nations it might oppose. More recent arguments have been just as
critical, but for different reasons, suggesting that the elusive and mal-
leable nature of public opinion makes it too susceptible to political
manipulation and difficult to divorce from the political masters who
summon it for their own ends. 7
Furthermore, because the majority of the public in the West follow
international affairs only in times of crisis and are often unfamiliar with
the context of such events, many have questioned the merits of public
opinion. According to John Zaller, “The consequence of asking unin-
formed people to state opinions on topics which they have given very
little if any previous thought are quite predictable: Their opinion
statements give every indication of being rough and superficial.” 8
Given such shortcomings, some have feared that public opinion, if
allowed to go unchecked, could have dire consequences for foreign
policy. As Walter Lippman, one of the first thinkers to devote sub-
stantial effort to the subject wrote, “The unhappy truth is that the
prevailing public opinion has been destructively wrong at the critical
junctures . . . It has shown itself to be a dangerous master of decision
when the stakes are life and death.” 9
In dealing with public opinion, it is important to differentiate
between public opinion as manifested in polling data and perceived
public opinion as presented in forums such as the editorial pages of
elite newspapers. The former notion of public opinion has been
defined as “the comprehensive preferences of the majority of individ-
uals on an issue.” 10 Perceived public opinion reflects what the mass